Coaching Sales People: Sales Meetings Are Expensive and Overrated

If you add up the value of everyone who sits in on a sales meeting—including yourself—you’ll realize how expensive sales meetings are. You should also remember the best training takes place in the field, with real accounts, not in a conference room with theoretical examples. But, there are still some legitimate reasons for having a sales meeting: education, training, team building, problem solving, positive psych and recognition. 

Any other reason for getting together is not legit. Things like…
 Any subject which could be explained in memo, revenue updates, collections, policy statements, interdepartmental hassles and bitch sessions. Really, any subject that does not require group process is inappropriate for your sales meeting.

We suggest you set some simple standards for your sales meetings so your people will look forward to them instead of looking for ways to miss them. For example:

1. Each meeting will be a positive motivational experience.

2. No topic will be allowed if it could be accomplished in a one-on-one meeting.

3. All meetings will depend on group participation, group dynamics, and group process.

4. All negative information, asides, and emotions will be handled elsewhere.

When you format your sales meetings they will almost run themselves because everyone will participate. Here are some examples:

Brainstorming for Bright Ideas—Have a problem statement clearly identified and get the group developing lots of ideas.

Guest Speaker—Bring in a prospect or an expert that share useful information with your team.

Best Call of the Week—Each salesperson gets a chance to talk about a great call from the week before and why it went so well. It’s a great chance to learn from each other.

Success Log—A powerful way to document how your product has helped a client recently.

Thank You Notes—Bring a stack of thank you notes and have each sales person write a thank you to several Key Accounts.

You can probably think of dozens more. Successful sales meetings take place for the right reason, and tap the power of the group so they can learn and grow. What are you doing to make your sales meetings exceptional? Please share in the comments below.

Jim Hopes is the Chief Executive Officer at The Center for Sales Strategy